Each year at this time, I look forward and predict trends in social media for the coming year. But first, I look back at my predictions from last year. How’d I do? Not bad.

Social media continues to move forward toward business integration, a trend that I identified last year. In a joint study from Booz Allen and social platform developer Buddy Media, 57 percent of businesses surveyed plan to increase social media spending, while 38 percent of CEO’s label social as a high priority.

I was also partially accurate in predicting that Google would “strike back” in 2011. They did, with Google Plus, a formidable initiative that acts as Google’s “social layer” to the Web. Part social network and part social search, Google Plus has industry observers scratching their heads, wondering if Facebook will be given a run for their money or if the service evolves into something complimentary in a highly social Web.

via Six Social Media Trends for 2012 – David Armano – Harvard Business Review.

The past year didn’t see the emergence of the next Facebook or Twitter. Rather, it saw social and digital spread to new places and along the way enabled a wave of new opportunities for content creators and marketers.

Recently, I had an opportunity to speak about those opportunities at ThinkLA’s Trends Breakfast, a gathering of media, entertainment and advertising professionals in Los Angeles.

via 5 Key Digital Media and Advertising Trends for 2012 [VIDEO].

Reading is changing. And arguably, even more than e-readers, tablets, or “readers’ tablets,” smartphones are changing it.

via The Future of Context: Mobile Reading from Google to Flipboard to FLUD | Epicenter | Wired.com.

When small businesses contemplate a social media strategy, Facebook and Twitter get lots of attention. However, niche social networks and online communities offer additional opportunities for brands to connect with consumers in an environment that’s highly targeted and often less congested. Let’s look at how a different brands are using Instagram, Pinterest and Foodspotting to reach out to potential customers in novel ways.

via Niche Social Networks Deliver Big Results.

From the early days of the internet, the prospect of detailed metrics fueled the promise that online advertising could yield unprecedented insights about customer preferences and behavior. That promise has only partially materialized. True, online channels provide feedback that offline media cannot, but marketers are still grappling with how to make this input work toward the bottom line.

via 2012 Trends: Social Media Metrics Take Center Stage – eMarketer.

So here’s are a few quick questions to ask yourself when posting to your feed:

Is this interesting? Goes without saying, but a hefty number of news tweets and FB posts are boring or to boring content. Save the headline rundown for the RSS feed and highlight only the best or most important to promote. That gives you more room in the timeline to interact without overwhelming streams with a list of headlines.

Does everyone already know? You can retweet, but don’t just repeat without adding value. What can you/your organization add? Solicit feedback on the topic from your followers and share that feedback.

Would I like, share, retweet or read this? If the answer is no, consider what you can do to make mundane more readable.

Would my mom care about it even if I didn’t create it? Because let’s be honest, your mom will “like” anything you create, but she’s also a proxy for the general public when it comes to whether pieces will resonate.

Did someone else have it first or say it better? Credit them!

How can I engage other followers or organizations in this post? It’s more than OK to reply to followers, and it’s OK to share what they or others you follow share. (Your organizations and you personally do follow people, right?! You don’t have to follow everyone who follows you, but you absolutely should follow people you find interesting and the newsmakers in your niche and community.)

Bonus: Does it involve cute animals or is it fun? It’s OK to be fun. Your followers will appreciate the well-selected smile.

via What Do Followers Really Want? Not An RSS Feed – 10,000 Words.

This time last year I wrote a post outlining how online reading patterns had changed over 2010. The habits and products for reading on the Web have continued to evolve over 2011. This year, for example, Google+ arrived on the scene and changed the way many people find and discuss topical articles. We also saw continued innovation in mobile and tablet reading apps.

In this post I identify two key trends in online reading over 2011, plus two main ways that our online reading habits have changed.

via How Online Reading Has Evolved in 2011.

Klout operates under American privacy law, or rather, the lack of it. If you created a Klout account in the past, you were unable to delete it short of sending legal letters until November 1st, when they kindly added an “opt out” mechanism. More to the point, Klout analyse your social graph and create accounts for all your contacts without asking them for prior consent. It also appears to use an unwitting user’s Twitter or FB credentials to post updates on their Klout scores, prompting the curious-but-ignorant to click on a link to Klout, whereupon they will be offered a chance to log in with their Facebook or Twitter credentials. So it spreads like herpes and it’s just as hard to get rid of. Is that all?

via Evil social networks – Charlie’s Diary.

It’s different things to different people, of course — corporations, regular Joes, celebrities, governments, etc.

We asked more than a dozen entrepreneurs, pundits, academics, and avid social media participants to continue the open-ended sentence: “The future of social media is…”

Their answers are interesting, informative, and occasionally very funny.

via The Future Of Social Media Is….

SAP GivesWe tend to, collectively, think of social media as either “personal,” ”political,” or “commercial.” “Personal” is connecting with old friends from high school, or sharing your love of your beer can collection (for some people it will always be 1977). “Political” is voicing your beliefs in a way never before seen in such a scale, from the recent wild fire spread across North Africa to President Obama’s social election strategy. “Commercial” is our ability to interact with a company as equals, from how we buy to how we express our opinions of that company. However, with Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR, for short), we have the perfect blend of all three in social media.

via Social Media Means Transparency into Corporate Social Responsibility – Forbes.